Organisers of the National Arts Festival are doing all they can to ensure a smooth run for this year’s bumper edition of the Festival.
Organisers of the National Arts Festival are doing all they can to ensure a smooth run for this year’s bumper edition of the Festival.
Last year’s Festival was followed by a series of complications as unhappy traders spoke out about not being allowed to trade on High Street, local and international artists complained about the state of performance venues and the relocation of the Transnet Village Green from Fiddlers Green to Rhodes University’s Great Field caused consternation.
In addition, the Daily Dispatch reported that some theatre directors, who are members of the United Theatre Practitioners Company, felt that they did not receive fair treatment from Makana Municipality.
In the Dispatch report the directors accused the municipality of sabotaging their performances by removing the posters advertising their shows. They also claimed that due to this unfair treatment, they lost a lot of revenue.
Thandy Matebese, spokesperson for the municipality, said the municipality did remove the posters and that people “are not allowed to stick them on private properties without the owners’ consent”. He also said that during the Festival some property owners request assistance from the municipality when they need posters to be removed from their buildings.
Director of Ikhaya Theatre Productions, Bongani Diko said that one of the biggest challenges facing local artists is a lack of capital. He said that the “only money available is only for that specific week of the Festival but there is no budget planned for the next year from both the sponsors and the municipality. When local groups need money to register for the Fringe they suffer because there’s no budget available,” he said.
Diko said that the budget “needs to be prepared early because people who register late get the worst venues such as tents”.
Matebese said that some local groups are assisted by the Makana Arts Council and that the municipality is currently in talks with the National Arts Council about how to identify and assist local groups.
He urged all local groups and theatre companies to apply as early as possible for assistance. The deadline for this year’s Fringe registration was on Monday, 25 January.
The director of the National Arts Festival, Ismail Mahomed says that they will continue to address the issues raised by some traders and artists and hope that there will be an improvement. With regards to space for informal traders, he said that “there needs to be control mechanisms” where everyone will be placed in a neat and open area to sell their wares.
This year the Festival will run from 20 June to 4 July, a total of 15 days and Mahomed says “the additional days can do more for the economy.”
